spin

Gosh, Stephan, you can think whatever flighty thoughts pop into your head.

To deal with the issues, are you trying to kid yourself that Jews would find the blemish of castration acceptable to the notions of purity????? You would be joking.

You should give up this unacceptable approach.

It might be possibly a chance that well, maybe,... What bankruptcy is this?

You are trying to claim everyone from Jesus to Paul via all the disciples except Peter as literal eunuchs. This is unsubstantiated claptrap, apparently based on a willful desire to misunderstand Tertullian. To tout such an idea as holy castration suggests that you are out of touch with the thought of the age, Jewish thought in which any blemish made individuals ineligible for more sacred duties. This means that any thought of castration as the way to go toward holiness didn't come from a Jewish source. The ability to have children was sacred and celibacy was the way to go in order to act purely and maintain the procreative option.


spin

spamandham

Probably true, but rejection of circumcision and other Jewish ritual laws probably didn't come from a Jewish sources either.

stephan huller

I am not saying that Genesis was written to support ritual castration. Nor am I arguing that any Jews read the text this way. I am saying that sectarian Christians like the Marcionites and those who used the Gospel of the Egyptians (if they weren't the same) might have interpreted the experience at Peniel to justify ritual castration.

You were throwing up objections like God's blessing to be fruitful and multiply proved that Jacob and Rachel had sex AFTER Peniel. This objection is dismissed by Rashi and the actual context of the blessing (i.e. RIGHT before the birth of Benjamin).

The point is that it is possible that some Christians justified their ritual castration practice with the Peniel experience. Nothing about the Genesis narrative makes that impossible.

stephan huller

I don't agree with either of you. Let's remember the objection of Agrippa and Aquila that circumcision didn't come from God because it wasn't part of the ten utterances. Someone interpreting the Peniel experience as a reference to castration could also argue that it 'came from God' or that it was a 'gift of God.'

Remember Solo's objection to ritual castration:

Look again at the Life of Polycarp and its reference to castration:

For that it is voluntary on the part of the man who so chooses, and that it is a gift of God whose is the power, our Saviour showed when He said that men made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake, and that all men could not receive this word. [Life of Polycarp 14]

Circumcision might have been understood to be 'made according to man' (because it wasn't 'given' [nathan] by God in the ten utterances); castration might have been the gift of God at Peniel.

spin

So, not from Jesus or from Paul, or any of the disciples. We scratch your eisegesis of Tertullian. (But then while your reading of castration into the wrestling scene is also eisegesis on your part, have you got any ancient christian witnesses who developed the same reading?)


spin

ph2ter

A similar strange event is described also in Exodus:

At a lodging place on the way, the Lord met [Moses] and was about to kill him. But Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off her son’s foreskin and touched [Moses’] feet with it. “Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me,” she said. So the Lord let him alone. (At that time she said “bridegroom of blood,” referring to circumcision.) (Exodus 4:24-26)

In both cases we have a strange night struggle with God connected with some kind of virilia mutilation.

There was mentioned that it is not possible to conceive a castration among the Jews. But I would not be so sure.
As I already mentioned on this forum regarding the Jewish sect of Essenes it is interesting to note that eunuch priests at Ephesus temple of Artemis were called also 'essenes' - drones.

At Ephesus, Artemis was associated with the bee as her cult animal. In fact, the whole organization of the sanctuary in classical times seems to have rested on the symbolic analogy of a beehive, with swarms of priestesses called bees, melissai, and numerous eunuch priests called 'drones', essenes (Barnet 1956)(Taken from The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe: Myths and Cult Images By Marija Gimbutas)

The Hebrew or Aramaic equivalent of the name of this sect is unknown. So, if it wasn't their original name, why Philo and Josephus used it?
The Greek and the Jewish Essenes lived a celibate life, but could they both practice emasculation?
According to Josephus, the Jewish Essenes had customs and observances such as collective ownership, elected a leader to attend to the interests of them all whose orders they obeyed, were forbidden from swearing oaths and sacrificing animals, controlled their temper and served as channels of peace, carried weapons only as protection against robbers, had no slaves but served each other and, as a result of communal ownership, did not engage in trading.
Curiously, Josephus also says that they preserve secrets, and are very mindful of the names of the angels kept in their sacred writings. Pliny relates in a few lines that the Essenes do not marry, possess no money, and had existed for thousands of generations (!!!).

Toto

Prosenes discussion split off here

stephan huller

ph2ter

I am very indebted to your information about the connection between the cult of Artemis and the Essenes. As I have noted many times here the garb of the orthodox priesthood has been argued to have derive from the eunuch priests of Artemis.

I have tried - along with many others - to connect the name 'Essene' with the Aramaic verb 'to heal' because of Philo. If the term is Greek and has some connection to bees it might explain the organization of monasteries into 'cells' (which mimics bees) as well as the heretic Cerinthus (http://www.jstor.org/pss/283989) as meaning the reddish honey substance made by bees. I have unsuccessfully tried to explain the name 'Cerinthus' as somehow being related to the common root in Latin and Aramaic for 'horn.' It is worth noting that either Pantaenus or his gospel (Strom 1.1) is likened to a Sicilian honeybee.

I had never thought of this line of interpretation. Thank you I will look for other possible references.

stephan huller

Clement does seem to use bees and words related to κήρινθος (cerinthos) to describe the essential work of the Church. Here are some examples:

Whence, "Seek, and ye shall find," holding on by the truly royal road, and not deviating. As we might expect, then, the generative power of the seeds of the doctrines comprehended in this treatise is great in small space, as the "universal herbage of the field," as Scripture saith. Thus the Miscellanies of notes have their proper title, wonderfully like that ancient oblation culled from all sorts of things of which Sophocles writes: "For there was a sheep's fleece, and there was a vine, And a libation, and grapes well stored; And there was mixed with it fruit of all kinds, And the fat of the olive, and the most curious Wax-formed work of the yellow bee [μελίσσης κηρόπλαστον ὄργανον]." [Stromata iv.2]

I think κήρινθος was originally developed from a description again that the true gospel was developed last and from a variety of earlier sources. As we read at the beginning of the Stromata:

Now the Scripture kindles the living spark of the soul, and directs the eye suitably for contemplation; perchance inserting something, as the husbandman when he ingrafts, but, according to the opinion of the divine apostle, exciting what is in the soul. "For there are certainly among us many weak and sickly, and many sleep. But if we judge ourselves, we shall not be judged." Now this work of mine in writing is not artfully constructed for display; but my memoranda are stored up against old age, as a remedy against forgetfulness, truly an image and outline of those vigorous and animated discourses which I was privileged to hear, and of blessed and truly remarkable men [ὧν κατηξιώθην ἐπακοῦσαι, λόγων τε καὶ ἀνδρῶν μακαρίων καὶ τῷ ὄντι ἀξιολόγων].

Of these the one, in Greece, an Ionic; the other in Magna Graecia: the first of these from Coele-Syria, the second from Egypt, and others in the East. The one was born in the land of Assyria, and the other a Hebrew in Palestine. When I came upon the last (he was the first in power), having tracked him out concealed in Egypt, I found rest. He, the true, the Sicilian bee, gathering the spoil of the flowers of the prophetic and apostolic meadow, engendered in the souls of his hearers a deathless element of knowledge [ὑστάτῳ δὲ περιτυχὼν (δυνάμει δὲ οὗτος πρῶτος ἦν) ἀνεπαυσάμην, ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ θηράσας λεληθότα. Σικελικὴ τῷ ὄντι ἦν μέλιττα προφητικοῦ τε καὶ ἀποστολικοῦ λειμῶνος τὰ ἄνθη δρεπόμενος ἀκήρατόν τι γνώσεως χρῆμα ταῖς τῶν ἀκροωμένων ἐνεγέννησε ψυχαῖς].

Well, they preserving the tradition of the blessed doctrine derived directly from the holy apostles, Peter, James, John, and Paul, the sons receiving it from the father (but few were like the fathers), came by God's will to us also to deposit those ancestral and apostolic seeds. And well I know that they will exult; I do not mean delighted with this tribute, but solely on account of the preservation of the truth, according as they delivered it. For such a sketch as this, will, I think, be agreeable to a soul desirous of preserving from escape the blessed tradition.[Stromata 1.1]

Or go to the bee, and learn how laborious she is; for she, feeding on the whole meadow, produces one honey-comb [καὶ αὐτὴ γὰρ πάντα τὸν λειμῶνα ἐπινεμομένη ἓν κηρίον γεννᾷ].[ibid 1.4]

I think this demonstrates the very strong possibility that κήρινθος is somehow related to the development of the true gospel. Pantaenus is ALWAYS connected with the Gospel of the Hebrews. The Gospel of Hebrews is connected by Epiphanius with the Diatessaron. The Diatessaron is ALWAYS described as a 'mix' of earlier traditions. The same idea is present in Gaius's criticism of John, Justin's gospel, Marcion's gospel AND Secret Mark. I have said a number of times here that it is our inherited presumptions about the earliest gospel being the best. The ancients clearly disagreed.

spin

Sorry, spamandham, while the above was an appropriate response to your comment, the following was aimed at the OP. I was asleep at the wheel.


spin